


Only Love

by araliya



Category: Glee RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-17 22:17:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15471309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/araliya/pseuds/araliya
Summary: A Post-Breakup prompt inspired this but happy ending guaranteed (as always).





	Only Love

**Author's Note:**

> Title and lyrics from Paloma Faith's Only Love Can Hurt Like This.

_(I tell myself that I don't care that much)_ **  
**

 

It happens on a Friday night. They’ve finished filming for the week, and the ride home is a tense, glacial thing. Darren’s left his car in the lot, something Chris  _knows_  is a bad idea. One, because people would notice, but more so because of what Chris is painfully aware he’s about to do.

 

It’s more out of selfish reasoning than anything else. Chris knows that he has to do  _something_  or he’ll soon be hurt beyond repair. The contract has been extended, the lines have been drawn, and everything’s suddenly gotten a whole lot more  _permanent_. The worst thing is, he hadn’t even had a say. Darren had made his choice alone, and it had seemed like Chris hadn’t even been a factor in anything.

 

Yet, Darren still had his heart, and if Chris wanted it kept in one piece, he’d have to take it back.  _For your own good_ , Chris had told himself.  _You’ll heal._

 

“I can’t do this anymore,” he says finally, the words coming out of his mouth stunted and bitter-tasting.

 

Darren looks like he’s been slapped. “What?”

 

Chris stares out of the windshield, watching the rain run in rivulets down the glass. The traffic throbs around them like a clogged vein. He doesn’t reply. He  _can’t_.

 

“You want us to break up,” Darren states hollowly. When Chris doesn’t reply, Darren grows visibly upset. “Chris? Is that what you mean?”

 

“...yes.”

 

“You want us to break up,” Darren repeats, as if saying it out loud will somehow help him make better sense of it all. He laughs disbelievingly, short and thick and pained. The sound crushes Chris’ insides into a bruised pulp. “That’s it? This is over? Just like that, this is fucking over?”

 

The traffic crawls forwards at a snail’s pace, red lights glowing around them like ill-omened lanterns.

 

“Don’t I even get a reason?” he asks again, this time more quietly.

 

“You’re hurting me,” Chris cries out, almost hysterically. His fingers grip the steering wheel so tight his knuckles turn white. He can see Darren’s eyes flit to them; in another life he would have reached over to soothe Chris’ taut muscles. “You’re hurting me and I just can’t stand by and _let it happen_.”

 

Darren looks stricken. “What?” he whispers. “I- I don’t understand-”

 

“I can’t keep coming second best to this- this whole fucking  _charade_  you’ve got going on. I feel like I don’t mean  _anything_  to you anymore.”

 

“That’s not true,” Darren says fiercely. “That’s not fucking true, Chris. I  _love_  you.”

 

“How do I know that’s true when nothing you’ve done has shown me that? Actions speak louder than words, and you can’t keep expecting me to hang onto every promise you’ve ever made!”

 

Darren unsteadily rakes his fingers through his hair. “I-” He looks like he’s about to say something, expression twisted with an inner conflict that Chris isn’t privy to, but decides against it. “I don’t know what to do,” he murmurs helplessly.

 

“Nothing, Darren,” Chris says, the pit of his stomach roiling with the knowledge that  _this isn’t right, this isn’t right, this isn’t right_. “Nothing at all.”

 

***

 

_(but when you're not there I just crumble)_

 

It is the first time Chris sees Darren cry. The traffic finally runs thin and the lights turn green and the tears stream down Darren’s face, slow and silent. If Chris’ heart weren’t locked up and stifled behind his sternum, it would be lying on the floor of the car, bleeding uselessly. All he has to do is get home. Then he can release the pain that’s been slowly rearing back like the tide before a tsunami.

 

When Chris drops Darren off at his place (cold and untouched, plastic dust covers still lying atop the furniture), Darren wipes at his eyes harshly with the heels of his hands. Before he steps out of the car, he only says two things:

 

“I love you. Please don’t forget that.”

 

Chris waits until he gets back to his house, to the dead, foreign, Darren-less silence, to say it back.

 

***

 

_(only love can hurt like this)_

 

Chris finds it a few days later. He’s numbly clearing out Darren’s things, leaving them in boxes by the front door for him to collect. Darren had wanted to do it himself, but he’d been called out to New York earlier for a work commitment.

 

The ring is delicate and simple- a thin band of platinum with two interweaving threads running through the centre. It glows softly in the darkness of the unlit room that they used to share- in it the bed Chris has yet to bring himself to lie in alone. The box it’s held in is a velvet black, and opens with a muffled  _snick_.

 

Chris falls to his knees, mind in scattered disarray. He can’t think straight- not with the precious band of metal sitting in his palm like a burglar holding onto something he knows he shouldn’t have stolen.

 

The sock drawer lies open and half-empty. The tears roll off his nose and onto the carpet. The minutes ooze by like glue.

 

Finally, he tucks the ring back in the box with shaking fingers, the remnants of what had once seemed like an insignificant memory slowly coming back to him. A few months ago, they’d been lying in bed, sheets kicked to the floor as the heat from their bodies slowly melted away. Darren had casually slipped one of his rings on Chris’ finger, fiddling with it absently.

 

The minuscule smile that had graced Darren’s face when he’d found that they had the same sized fingers had earned him a bemused look from Chris. Now, he feels like he’s been punched.

 

Darren was going to propose. Chris had wanted Darren to show him that he loved him, and Darren had been about to fucking  _propose_.

 

Chris lets the thought sink in, and it fills his limbs with warmth. Darren had wanted to ask Chris marry him- he’d wanted to  _spend the rest of his life with him_. The warmth in Chris’ body turns sickeningly lukewarm when he remembers exactly why he’d been cleaning out Darren’s sock drawer in the first place.

 

Swallowing thickly, Chris rubs at his damp cheeks. If there’s anything he’s ever known in his entire life, it’s that if the ring were in Darren’s outstretched hand at that moment, he would say still yes.

 

***

 

_(save me, save me)_

 

“Chris?” Darren’s voice is slow and uncertain as he takes in the empty hallway. Where Chris had said he’d leave Darren’s boxes of belongings, there isn’t a single one in sight. “What is this?”

 

“I have to talk to you,” Chris starts carefully. Darren looks at him in confusion, and, if Chris dares to imagine it, a tiny sliver of hope.  _Stop stalling, Christopher_ , he tells himself firmly.  _Fucking do it._

 

Slowly, he reaches into his sweatpants’ pocket. When Chris pulls his hand out and unfurls his fingers, Darren’s eyes widen.

 

“ _Chris_ ,” he whispers brokenly.

 

“You don’t have to explain,” Chris says, before Darren can continue. “I want to say something.”

 

Darren nods jerkily. His hands are shaking.

 

“Come sit,” Chris suggests quietly, backing down blindly onto the bottom step of the staircase. He won’t make it to the lounge where there are actual chairs; he’s sure his heart will plummet out of his chest somewhere along the way. “Please?”

 

Darren sits down unsurely, eyes still darting to the box in Chris’ pale fingers.

 

“When I broke up with you,” Chris begins, “it was because I felt blindsided. I was so hurt that you made the decision that you did regarding your career. I guess I know now that I didn’t have a right to feel the way I had. Darren, you did it for yourself- you did what I always told you to do: never put our relationship before your career because no matter what, we’d still make it.

 

He laughs thickly at the irony of it all, and Darren places a tentative hand atop Chris’. The furrow in his brow and the questioning look in his eyes spurs Chris onward.

 

“I hurt you for doing what I had constantly encouraged. I hurt you because I was selfish, and didn’t acknowledge for a second my constant conviction that we would withstand any pressure from the outside. I wanted to feel loved, and I took that decision as a sign that you didn’t love me anymore.” He swallows unevenly, the sound loud in the static silence of the hallway. “I felt like I had lost you.”

 

Darren stares at him wordlessly. The expression on his face is unreadable, and Chris’ resolve dissipates. He smooths out Darren’s fingers and places the box in his palm.

 

“You can have this,” he says softly. “I won’t even pretend I have the right to it anymore.”

 

When Darren doesn’t say anything, Chris makes to get up, his chest closing in on itself with the realisation of the futility of his efforts. He’d been kidding himself if he’d thought he deserved Darren anymore. Before Chris can step away, Darren’s hand closes tight around his wrist.

 

“Darling,” is all he has to say, before Chris drops back down like a limp rag doll. Darren opens his arms, and it takes a moment for him to understand that Darren is actually offering him comfort, and reassurance, and  _love_ ; everything that comes unconditionally with Darren’s touch. Chris lets himself be enveloped, and his heart stutters a tattoo that spells out the syllables of Darren’s name.  

 

“I’m so sorry,” Chris whispers. “I’m so fucking sorry that I doubted you.”

 

“I love you,” Darren replies instead, like it’s the answer to everything. And the more Chris thinks about it, the more it really is.

 

***

 

_(it must have been a deadly kiss)_

 

“Mff,  _amazing_ ,” Chris says, breathing in appreciatively. Darren stands at the stove, flipping one of his speciality omelets onto its other side. He’s wearing an outrageous pair of neon boy shorts, and his hair stands up at the back of his head, gorgeously dishevelled.

 

“You’re lucky I can cook,” Darren replies, leaning an elbow on the counter and accepting a chaste kiss. “We’ll be dead by thirty if takeout is all we have to survive on.”

 

“Mmm, a life well lived I say.”

 

Darren turns the stove off and halves the omelet with the flat edge of a spatula. “Not if that’s all the time I get to spend with you,” he says simply, taking a fork and cutting up a piece to bring to Chris’ lips.

 

Chris smiles around the mouthful, always a little startled when declarations like that come out of Darren with such ease. “Thank you,” he murmurs, swallowing. Darren grins and has a piece himself, bright white teeth clinking against the fork.

 

“Do you have to leave now?” he asks, toying with one of the bands on Chris’ wrist.

 

“Yeah,” Chris says apologetically. “I’m already a bit late and this tour stuff tends to take  _years_.”

 

“Well my shoot finishes pretty early, so I’ll be back before you. Do you want me to wait up for you for lunch?”

 

“Yes please. I’ll bring us something.”

 

Chris pats his pockets for his phone and keys, and lets Darren walk him to the door. He kisses Chris gently, smoothing down a tuft of his hair that has refused to lie flat.

 

“See you in a bit?” Chris asks, watching Darren slide his palm all the way down to Chris’ hand, and take it in his own.

 

Darren presses his lips to the cool band of platinum on his finger, eyes raised to Chris’ own. “See you in a bit,” he confirms softly.

 

Chris turns, pulling the door open and stepping out into the blinding sun.

 

He doesn’t look back. Everything’s going to be okay.


End file.
